Travel – Page 5 – Travelling Leila

Singapore – Day 6

Posted on April 13, 2014April 13, 2014 by travellingleila

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29 November 2013

Today we switched from fauna to flora, starting the day with a visit to the Botanic Gardens. They are huge here in Singapore, splendid and fragrant – a real riot of tropical greenery. The reason why they are called “gardens” and not “garden” is that in fact there are several themed gardens gathered in one place: the Fragrant Garden, Healing Garden, Ginger Garden, a few others, and – the crown of all – the National Orchid Garden. The territory between those gardens is actually park as well, with ponds, swans, and so on.

We started off very briskly, stopping next to each plant, but then our fervour and enthusiasm somehow began to diminish. The sun was beating down, even though there was a black cloud looming in the sky and mercifully hiding the sun behind it from time to time. For some reason, in the Healing Garden we were attacked and cruelly stung by all sorts of insects – seemed like they had been healed there and were now full of energy.

Once again, for the umpteenth time in Singapore, it started raining just as we entered a restaurant to have lunch, as if the rain had been waiting for us to take shelter under the roof. The restaurant, which was obviously right inside the Gardens, was called Halia, meaning “ginger” in Malay, so, as one may guess, this spice was present in abundance in all the meals. The portions were strikingly small, but delicious. On leaving the restaurant, which we did after it stopped raining, we were provided with free raincoats, which we didn’t have the chance to make use of.

Having taken a liking to plants, we left the natural gardens just to head to artificial ones – the famous gardens at Marina Bay, with large conservatories. We feared that we would have an overdose of the monotonous tropical flora, but these gardens had a very different spirit. The conservatories, which could be accessed via a quite peculiar viaduct, were very interesting in design, looking like giant blooming bouquets or trees.

We visited only two of the conservatories: the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest (a term for a very humid tropical montane forest). The first one contained a variety of roses, geraniums and other flowers and, for whatever reason, vegetables of giant sizes, such as aubergines, peppers, cabbage and tomatoes.

The second one was designed as basically a mountain, with diverse vegetation on its slopes, and it was so moist there that the air was filled with drizzle. Atop the mountain there was a little garden called the Lost World, which could be accessed by lift, and there was a circular path descending to different levels from that garden. The last thing to see before exiting was a video with gloomy forecasts that by 2100 the temperature on Earth would rise by an average of 5 degrees, which would result in all sorts of disasters, such as the extinction of many species of animals and plants, reduction of the amount of drinking water, spread of diseases – although it ended with a reassurance that all this could be avoided.

What’s not a problem in Singapore (well, not that anything at all is a problem here!) is that everything is constructed and designed very conveniently and user-friendly. Places to eat can be found literally everywhere. Wherever you go, whether it’s a garden, a mall, a museum or a theatre, you can be sure that you won’t stay hungry. So, quite naturally, we found where to have dinner just as we exited the Gardens and turner around the corner. It was a Chinese restaurant, mainly seafood oriented, and, to spare ourselves from difficult choices, we decided to go for a set meal, where we were continuously served small portions of different dishes to sample, which seemed to be the right decision, as everything was delicious.

Since it was our last full day in Singapore, we definitely felt the urge to go see the famous Raffles hotel and taste its signature cocktail, the Singapore Sling. The colonial style hotel, of course, claims to be chic. It’s a white-stone building, with a courtyard and a shopping arcade full of fashion boutiques. The hotel is certainly impressive, but not drop dead impressive. A small detail: in the glamorous Long Bar, where most of the guests buy this very cocktail, on each table there is a basket filled with unshelled peanuts. Guests throw the shells right on the floor, and if they leave them on their tables by mistake, the waiters whisk them to the floor when clearing the table after them. As a result, the entire floor is littered with those shells.

Asia, English, Singapore

Singapore – Day 5

Posted on March 19, 2014April 25, 2014 by travellingleila

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28 November 2013

The day turned out very diverse in content which ranged quite impressively from the Universal Studios amusement park to a classical concert. But – one thing at a time.

Since the day before we had spent very limited time on Sentosa, we decided to repeat the visit right in the morning, and started again from the beach, and from the same one. We had kind of got used to it somehow, but the beach attendant must have been having a senior moment: he asked us literally all the same set of questions as yesterday: where we were from, whether we spoke Russian, what kind of country Azerbaijan was and whether it was close to Kazakhstan.

Even though the attendant caused a puzzled laughter with his repetition, the sunny weather which also replicated that of the previous day, was accepted with joy. The water was unpleasantly different though: tons of algae had been brought by the wind, and there was also something stinging in the water.

We hesitated a lot whether to visit the Universal Studios after all, or not. Having googled it thoroughly, we found out that it was basically nothing more than just an amusement park, and I personally am not a big fan of those. Nevertheless, we still decided to go and take a look – a very expensive look, I have to say.

As a result, we, limited in time (due to the concert in the evening!) visited only three of the attractions. The first one was a complacent and almost childlike Sesame Street ride. The second one could have been the Transformers, but we noticed just in time that the ride included rotation and tipping upside down, which I absolutely can’t tolerate – and escaped.

The one we found tempting was the attraction themed on the ‘Mummy’ and ancient Egypt. And that’s where our adventure began! First of all, it turned out that we were not allowed to take anything inside – so everything, including bags, had to be locked in a locker. We accidentally shut the first one, even before we had time to read how to set a passcode for it, and had to call the attendant and ask him to open the locker, promising to show our passports as soon as the bags containing them would be removed from there. We then put our belongings in another locker, properly following the guidance. There was a sign saying that the first 45 minutes were free of charge, and we recklessly trusted the digital clock showing 15 minutes waiting time in the queue – so we didn’t take any money with us, especially that we didn’t even have pockets to put it in. And there we went, right into this hallway, imitating an Egyptian temple, where we got stuck in an endless queue in a totally dark corridor, which took nearly an hour. The ride itself was very short. We expected something absolutely scary, but it was rather fun, despite the dizzying turns forward, backward, up and down, as well as the roars and spits of fire of the Egyptian priests. When we finally got to our locker, we couldn’t open it again – the free time had expired, and all our money was locked inside – so we had to call the attendant for help once more.

And the third attraction was simply a little 4D cartoon about Shrek with shaking, water splashing and some hairy stuff, supposed to represent spiders, touching our legs.

Of course, we were ‘felled’ by the Egyptian attraction – if it hadn’t been for the hour-long standing, we could have caught another attraction. And all we had time for was having lunch at a Chinese bistro on Hollywood street right at the Universal Studios. At least we were precisely on schedule.

And finally the long-awaited concert! It opened with Lyadov’s ‘Enchanted Lake’, but the word “enchanted” can be also applied to our overall impressions of the concert. It was truly an awesome event! Actually, it was a concert of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, considered the best in Asia, directed by Lan Shui. And Lang Lang – a phenomenal, brilliant pianist – was taking part in it, playing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. It’s difficult to find words to describe the amazing impressions that his performance left on us. I was literally taken away, even being aware that if a piece of music as difficult to grasp as this one, had been played by someone else, it could have just seemed to me a set of random sounds and nothing special. Lang Lang’s virtuosity, power and dexterity are striking, and you just can’t imagine how anyone possibly can perform this piece at all. We were seated so that his face could be seen, so we had the opportunity to observe the infinite palette of his emotions.

Taking pictures and videos was prohibited (that’s how the lockers theme was continued – we had to lock our cameras in one before the concert), but when Lang Lang gave an encore, I, like some others, contrived to take a few pictures with my phone. Talking about the encore – the public went so wild that, despite all his efforts to simply take a bow and leave, he had to stay and play an intermezzo by Manuel Ponce and a waltz by Chopin.

At first I thought that Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, which was to be played in the second part, was just an unnecessary appendage to the great genius Lang Lang. But in this case there was another genius – actually Tchaikovsky himself, with a very good performance of the orchestra and Lan Shui’s conducting.

Overall, I enjoyed the concert so much that even having to wait an hour for a taxi, which wasn’t extremely pleasant, didn’t spoil the great mood.

Asia, English, Singapore

Singapore – Day 4

Posted on March 10, 2014March 10, 2014 by travellingleila

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27 November 2013

This morning, right after breakfast, we went up to the concierge in order to find out whether there was anything interesting going on in town. Instead of an answer, he handed us a brochure, where we read that tomorrow there was going to be a performance of Lang Lang – the Chinese pianist that we had seen in a TV-programme quite some time ago in London, got very impressed and had been dreaming to hear live since then. And now we were lucky: he was here!

We immediately changed the plans for tomorrow: the concert in the evening would make it impossible to spend a whole day on Sentosa island. So we decided to book our concert tickets and then go to Sentosa right today. These plans were overset by the rather useless concierge: in response to our request to book tickets for us, he muttered with a strong Indian accent that he couldn’t do this, basically telling us to go book ourselves. We asked him to clarify whether we needed to go directly to the concert hall and got an affirmative answer. We found this pretty strange, as almost anywhere, we thought, there at least existed box offices around the city, if hotels didn’t provide such services.

Quite obviously, we didn’t know the exact location of the hall, so we had to stray a bit – but no rest for the wicked, so we strayed, searched and found. The receptionist at the concert hall – a nice Chinese young lady – seemed way more helpful than our concierge: she told us that the ticket office actually opened an hour later, but there were options to either book tickets online (and she gave us the link) or else to buy them from SISTIC Outlets – a ticketing service with outlets all around Singapore (which actually did exist after all!); she then asked us where we were going from there (to the Harbour Front station, in order to head to Sentosa from there, as you remember), and advised where the nearest outlet was. Surely there must have been at least one around Orchard Road as well, and if the concierge had told us about them, he would have saved us at least an hour, or even an hour and a half.

Anyway, we found a SISTIC Outlet in the Vivocity mall, which could be accessed directly from the tube, bought our tickets and, totally relieved, albeit later than originally planned, got on the Sentosa Monorail right from the mall. By the way, the train fare can be paid with EZ-Link cards, which are also valid for other types of public transport, and can even be used even in some stores.

Once on the island, we decided to limit ourselves to the beach and the Aquarium only, and then come again another time to visit the Universal Studios separately. It was lunch time and we sat down in an Asian eatery, where, as we had already seen in many places, the complete diversity of the south-east Asian cuisine was represented by countries: China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia – but also some western food, like spaghetti or Fish’n’Chips, for those tired of Asian food. Generally, what I like in Singapore, is this spirit of pan-Asianism – although it would be weird to expect anything else from a city-state with such a colourful ethnic composition: the backbone of the population is formed by Chinese, Malays and Tamils.

The weather was exceptionally suitable for the beach: as a special gift, the sun was shining all the time, without a single drop of rain (all the previous days had been cloudy). Arriving at the Beach station, we realised that there were beaches both to the left and to the right, and, after hanging about near the signs announcing this, like Buridan’s donkeys, we eventually chose the one to the right – Siloso beach. We had never seen such white fine soft sand before. The beach was quite uncrowded. Among the few other visitors there were a group of teen school students (maybe even skipping classes) who were swimming right in their clothes – both boys and girls.

After swimming to our heart’s content we headed to the Aquarium – the largest one in the world. It’s simply gorgeous, especially its huge glass arches, where fish glide both along the walls, and above one’s head – a very strong impression. We took tons of pictures and videos of various fish: the “smiling” rays resembling Astrid Lindgren’s Karlsson, disguised as a ghost, the sharks with their concentrated yet dazed snouts, and the moray eels. I loved the large amphitheatre, where the whole wall was made of glass, and it felt as though there was a whole ocean behind it. There we just sat on the floor and stared at the fish scurrying to and fro, among which rays stood out again, but this time giant ones.

Next to the dolphin displays, we were warned not to attract the dolphins’ attention, or beckon them, because they might decide what we offered them food, get discouraged and never come again when beckoned. It is understandable, as dolphins are highly intelligent beings, unlike, for example, some big fish, which had been staring at us for quite a long time with the stupidest expression (and painfully resembling someone I know, just couldn’t remember who exactly it was) – whether you beckon it or not.

We had dinner right on Sentosa, and oddly enough, at a Mexican, not Asian restaurant.

Asia, English, Singapore

Singapore – Day 3

Posted on February 24, 2014February 25, 2014 by travellingleila

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26 November 2013

If you feel the urge to move somewhere, do yourself a favour and move to Asia. Here is where one understands that Europe has totally outlived itself, as Asia has already left it a hundred paces behind and keeps developing by leaps and bounds, while Europe is busy with stuff like gay marriage. Having breakfast in Asia is also much better – any croissant would pale in comparison with hot noodles and dim sum early in the morning!

Being in Singapore and missing the opportunity to visit the zoo would be a big sin. The zoo is huge here, and the animals are kept almost in freedom. We rejected the suggestion to go on a 3.5 hour zoo tour with a transfer from the hotel, as we wanted to neither have any time limit nor to overpay, and so we went there all on our own – first by tube and then by bus. We do sometimes end up in silly situations here, underestimating how everything here is made for the convenience of people, so coming out of the tube at the Ang Mo Kio station, we walked out into the street in search of a bus stop. We shouldn’t have walked out at all, though! It turned out that the tube station was directly linked with the bus depot.

The bus ride was long but seamless. We purchased regular zoo tickets only and not those for various safaris, as we were told that not all animals would be represented there till the end of the year.

Even though we knew that the animals were more or less free here, it was still unexpected when we saw monkeys friskily jumping on the tree branches. As usual, most of the zoo looked more like the Land of Nod, though, for example the leopard cat did not even bother to come out of its shelter.

We literally had lunch with orangutans – we were sitting in the open cafeteria (the usual zoo type, with the only difference that it served Chinese, Malay and Indian dishes as well as western fast food) and they were swinging on ropes above our heads, landing on some kind of hammocks stretched between the branches, and eating leaves.

The zoo offered a chance to ride on elephants. We had a thought about it, which, however, somehow never materialised. Generally there was a huge variety of animals: there were lemurs, and babirusas, and porcupines, and tapirs, etc.

I am traditionally fond of reptiles, especially snakes – certainly not enough, however, to welcome their behaviour, as during Harry Potter’s London Zoo visit.

Generally, all animals were grouped according to different parts of the world and climatic zones, even the cold tundra was represented here, particularly, there was a dirty polar bear swimming in circles in a huge pool, following exactly the same trajectory, even poking its head to breathe strictly in the same place, and the large glass allowed to see it under the water as well, like in an aquarium.

We were lucky with the rain – again! – it started pouring when we were drinking tea under the roof of the cafeteria, just before leaving.

In the evening we decided to explore Singapore’s nightlife, and following all the tips we had read on the Internet, headed to Clarke Quay, where all the entertainment seemed to be focused. Apparently, there’s not much happening there on weekdays – for instance, none of the places supposed to be night clubs was functioning as one; instead they only served as a shelter for those few visitors wishing to have a drink or two. Most of the people were concentrated in the waterfront restaurants and were eating, eating, eating (and still, there weren’t too many, indeed, Singapore somehow looks surprisingly uncrowded – I wonder whether this is a seasonal phenomenon, or something permanent), but even those left at around 11pm.

Asia, English, Singapore

Singapore – Day 2

Posted on February 11, 2014February 11, 2014 by travellingleila

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25 November 2013

One gets used to everything very quickly: while yesterday the York Hotel hurt the eye by its huge empty halls, today it feels like that’s exactly how it should be.

As always, our formal introduction to the city started with a hop on-hop off bus tour. As one may guess, there are not (and can’t be) many old historical attractions, perhaps only a few Victorian-style buildings. Modern architecture looks interesting: the skyscrapers are not merely concrete towers, but something of fancy and whimsical shapes, and rather than standing each by itself, they form groups, located accorded to feng shui.

Again as always, we started with a full circle on the bus, just staring around, and then made our first hop off in Chinatown, for a detailed acquaintance. We were immediately lured into a street market with all kinds of souvenirs and various Chinese goods. Apart from the usual vendors, there were also stalls touting Chinese calligraphy and offering to write our names in Chinese. These calligraphy scrolls looked so exquisitely pretty that I got tempted.

Then it suddenly started raining heavily, and we hurried to take refuge in the nearest Chinese restaurant. It was completely empty when we just arrived, which seemed suspicious, but eventually everything turned out delicious (more details to follow in the “gastronomic” post), and the place got quite busy too.

Once we treated ourselves to some physical food, we turned to spiritual one and visited the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. It left a very enlightened and peaceful sensation, probably because Buddhism is one of the religions that focus on the person itself, its development and enhancement. The walls of the temple are adorned with statues of the Buddha, each having the same enigmatic half-smile, but with a different hand gesture, each of which apparently has its own meaning.

Another temple located in Chinatown, oddly enough, is the Sri Mariamman Hindu temple. While the Chinese temple had the shape of a pagoda, of course, the dome roof of this one represented a truncated pyramid, dotted with a motley crowd of multi-coloured statues of various deities. We did not go inside, as we would have had to take our shoes off, which would leave us completely barefoot.

The next thing we wanted to visit was Little India, but somehow we ended up going to the Marina Bay waterfront promenade instead. This is the area where Singapore’s financial centre is located, and it’s these skyscrapers that have the most intricate shape. The granite-paved promenade itself is surprisingly unfrequented (compared, for example, with Hong Kong’s waterfront, where we saw crowds of people).

Our main goal of getting off the bus at this particular stop was visiting the observation deck at Marina Bay Sands, and enjoy the night view of the city – we were already all in anticipation of how awesome the illuminated Singapore would look. In order to pass the time while waiting for nightfall, we took a river cruise on a very slow boat, enjoying the view of low colonial-style buildings along the banks of the Singapore River.

Before it even started getting dark, we got caught in a terrible tropical thundershower, and luckily enough, it started when we were about to disembark the boat, so we could quickly take shelter under the roof of The Shoppes mall at Marina Bay, from the windows of which we could observe a dense wall of water, pouring from the sky.

The decision was made instantly, and we headed to the food court to have dinner while waiting for the shower to be over! I really loved the whole idea of this food court, with pretty much all Asian (and not only Asian) cuisine represented here: Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Malaysian, Hakka, Hong Kong, Singaporean, Indian, Teochew, etc., as well as Italian and Mexican.

While we were queuing for the observation deck tickets, the staff honestly warned us: it was an open deck, the rain could resume any moment and we wouldn’t get our money back in that case. But we took the risk (and the lift to the 56th floor!) and stepped onto the wet, slippery observation deck with an absolutely magical view! Needless to say, right at the entrance we were literally forced to be photographed against a green background just to be subsequently photoshopped onto the view of the city. They then tried to foist the resulting photo on us for 50 singadollars, but we stubbornly refused to fork out and instead took tons of pictures ourselves.

Finally it started raining again, although not very heavily, and we got all wet, but really, this sight together with the laser and fountain show were well worth it!

Asia, English, Singapore

Singapore – Day 1

Posted on January 29, 2014 by travellingleila

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24 November 2013

Before our trip, we were a bit worried because of the very short connection between the Baku-Doha and Doha-Singapore flights. But everything went like clockwork – we made it on time, and so did our luggage. Needless to say, the flight felt really long and tiring, but what can I do, if Europe, which is much closer, is of less interest to me than Southeast Asia?

We arrived in Singapore on Sunday, and the myth of there being no traffic jams there was immediately dispelled – we were stuck for quite a while, not unlike in Baku. Perhaps, if our hotel hadn’t been so close to Orchard road – the main shopping street – or if it had been a working day, we would have had more luck, but it was what it was. After we got settled in the hotel, we still had time to walk on the Orchard Road and enjoy the sight of Christmas illuminations and decorations, which in the 30-degree heat looked rather surreal. Besides, the whole street was filled with a funny jingle, sounding either like bird tweeting, or some mechanical tinkling.

Well, no matter how nice the decorations are, you can see them pretty much anywhere, as well as all kinds of street performance – what’s really interesting is the local flavour: for example, on our way to Orchard Road, around Lucky Plaza, we saw hordes of women sitting on mats right on the sidewalk and having a picnic. It first looked to us like a bunch of homeless people, but they seemed too happy and well-dressed for that. It turned out that these were local Filipino maids, who love to spend their Sundays like this.

We marked our very first evening in Singapore with Singaporean food – but the gastronomic aspect of our trip will (hopefully!) be covered in a separate post.

English, Europe, Italy, Naples

Adventures of the Azeris in Italy – Naples

Posted on January 19, 2014 by travellingleila

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The transfer to Naples also started with quite a bit of a hassle. The first contributors to this were the Ischian hotel personnel. Not only couldn’t they figure out how to fill out our check-out documentation, demanding our fiscal codes, which of course, we’d never had, they also messed up our transfer – having made us pay a tidy sum for it, they sent us to the taxi stand on foot, promising to take the care of our luggage and have some hefty chaps deliver it to the same taxi stand in 10 minutes. But as 10, and then even 20 minutes passed, the luggage still did not appear anywhere in sight. Even the frail elderly driver – the one who had driven us here when we just arrived – started getting nervous. We called the hotel reception – just to hear the deadpan response that the hefty chaps were just about to leave the hotel (!). Goodness, we only had half an hour before the ferry departure, which was almost as long as necessary to get to the port in Forio! We also had a terrible suspicion that we would need to spend a lot of time to buy the tickets, but fortunately, the driver had already bought them. This somewhat smoothed out the situation, and we made it to the ferry.

The Neapolitan part of the transfer took place without incidents. But the hotel, quite frankly, surprised us – the entrance to the promised historical palace was through some dilapidated gateway, leading to a tiny elevator. But for every negative there is always a positive: it turned out that the rooms booked for us were being renovated, about which we had been notified via email – too late, though. Therefore, we were kindly moved to another hotel of their chain, a better one, and, most importantly, with a much better location – in particular, the tour bus stop was just around the corner.

After a nice lunch in a small trattoria (we had Neapolitan fried pizza – at least some diversity!), we rushed to the bus.

Surprisingly enough, initially we didn’t perceive Naples as too much of a coveted place to see. We were even saying that if our next day’s flight to Rome hadn’t been so early we would have had time to catch the very first boat directly from Ischia and would not have needed to move to Naples. How very wrong we were! Naples is an amazing city, with magnificent palaces and stunning views of the Gulf of Naples. However, our Amalfi tour guide Lena had been right in saying that it was a city of great contrasts: you can easily see piles of garbage, chipped walls, fluttering laundry – and then, just round the corner, a palace and a park of exceptional beauty. So, we happily rode the tour bus to the sounds of great Neapolitan songs – such as ‘ A Serenata ‘E Pullecenella, Marechiare, Piscatore’ E Pusilleco, and of course , the most famous one O Sole Mio.

As usual, our tickets were valid for all the routes, and we had the time to take two out of three: to historical sites and along the coast. And there were so many tempting places we could have visited if we only had had more time: the Aquarium, all those palaces and museums; even walking on those streets a bit more would have been lovely. Not only is the city beautiful, but it also has some sort of a special spirit and charm, so Naples became the truly magnificent completion of our trip to southern Italy, and even gave it a special meaning.

English, Europe, Ischia, Italy

Adventures of the Azeris in Italy – Ferragosto

Posted on January 7, 2014January 7, 2014 by travellingleila

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As we were planning our trip, we had no idea that we would have a chance to see a big holiday of Ferragosto on August 15. This day is celebrated everywhere – particularly, every hotel arranges a feast for their guests. Those restaurants that are not closed, also host parties. Of course, it would be absolutely foolish of us not to participate.

We were treated with very good live music – it was basically kind of a concert of old and new Italian hits. The food was really good as well and consisted of an aperitif with appetizers; assorted antipasti (ranging from ordinary bruschetta to exquisite oysters); pasta for entrée (spaghetti with seafood and ravioli ); a main seafood course (swordfish and king prawns) and a large variety of traditional pastry and fruit for dessert.

By the way, speaking about pasta for starter – this is not the know-how of our hotel. We were surprised to find out that the local cuisine (i.e. southern Italian) was totally devoid of liquid dishes, and meals very often start with pasta. Even the so-called mussel soup, popular in local menus, is essentially steamed mussels with a very small amount of liquid at the bottom.

The dinner ended with magnificent fireworks: right over our heads at 11pm, and then – somewhere in the distance at midnight. On this cheerful note, we said goodbye to Ischia – Naples awaits us tomorrow.

Amalfi Coast, English, Europe, Italy

Adventures of the Azeris in Italy – Amalfi Coast

Posted on December 17, 2013December 17, 2013 by travellingleila

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The “cool” guy despising group tours seems to have jinxed us. At first everything went very normal: the bus punctually picked us up at 5.15am, while it was still dark, collected other participants of the Amalfi Coast tour from their hotels and delivered all of us to Ischia Porto, where we boarded a ferry. In Naples we were met by a tour guide with a Baltic accent, and got on another bus.

I must say that Naples hadn’t made much of an impression when we arrived from Rome, but, as we drove through it, Lena the tour guide spoke of it with great passion. She was telling us about its status of the capital of the kingdom, its magnificent palaces neighbouring with sunless narrow streets with colourful linens hanging on the balconies, just like in the movie La Ciociara.

We drove out of Naples, past Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here we were told that everything around was pretty much sitting on a powder keg – there are lots of extinct and dormant volcanoes, and also the active Vesuvius. It erupts every 60-70 years, and the last time was just 69 years ago. Thus, on the one hand, the next eruption is anticipated with fear, but on the other, it is awaited, because the longer the interval between two eruptions, the more destructive disaster it turns into – for example, the eruption that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD occurred after 300 years of inactivity. However, people continue to settle right at the foot of the volcano with careless perseverance: the climate is too favourable and the soil too fertile for these places to be left. Officially construction within a radius of a few kilometers from Mount Vesuvius is prohibited. But people here seem to live with the if-you-mustn’t-but-want-to-do-it-then-you-can-do-it principle – especially that the law does not permit to destroy the buildings, even at the stage of one wall built only, and only makes the owners pay a fine of 20-30k euros.

At this point already we noticed that the traffic was very slow on our side of the road, we were basically in a traffic jam. But Lena suggested that this was due to tomorrow’s holiday of Ferragosto and had to do with everyone flocking to the resort coast. The reality was much worse: and we had the chance to fully appreciate it, as well as the “evil eye” of the New Russian, when we entered a two-kilometre tunnel. Here the column of vehicles literally froze, although the opposite lane was absolutely empty. We spent exactly an hour and a half in this tunnel, and the whole way from Naples to Sorrento took us a good four hours, while it barely should have taken 90 minutes. The people in the bus got extremely frustrated, the most radical ones were demanding to turn around, get on the opposite lane, return to Naples and get the money back, but this was absolutely impossible, because there was no opportunity to turn around, and besides large buses are allowed to move in only one direction along this coast. The most impatient ones left the bus at the exit of the tunnel, as the situation outside was no better, and walked around to stretch their legs.

Our tour guide talked to the Carabinieri driving past us, and found out that a terrible fatal accident had happened somewhere ahead and a funeral car was already heading there. Why it took almost two hours for the Carabinieri to get close to the scene remained a big question to us. And anyway, even to us (not quite knowing the intricacies of the case, of course) it seemed pretty logical that the traffic in the tunnel should have somehow been regulated in order to avoid such a disheartening and unsafe congestion in it.

It seemed that the whole tour went awry. However, the situation was saved: Lena promptly got in touch with their “headquarters ” and agreed that we would be allowed to board a different ferry at a different, nearer port an hour later than initially planned, which therefore allowed us to save an hour, and then one more – by cancelling the set lunch planned originally and giving the tourists an opportunity to eat on the go during town walks. And finally, exhausted, but happy, we ~~returned~~ arrived in Sorrento. What can I say, it is indeed a very beautiful town. We were told that it had been visited by Gorky (again!), Feodor Chaliapin, Sylvester Shchedrin. Everything here is all about lemons and olives – lemons reach monstrous proportions (up to two kilograms) and have a distinctive flavour, the whole town smells of them! The mountains slopes are covered with olive trees, with rows stretched underneath them. We were told that the olives for the best first press oil must be collected directly from the tree and not from the ground, which is virtually impossible to do manually on steep slopes – and that’s where those nets come in handy!

Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast are considered traditional wedding places for couples from all over the world. We saw an English wedding, with guests walking on the streets and taking photos.

The views here are just so breathtakingly beautiful, in the truest sense of the word! In general, a drive on the mountain serpentine feels, to put it mildly, quite exciting. The bus is driving on a narrow ledge along the cliff, at a height of up to 300 metres above sea level. The road, however, had not always been there – it was constructed by Mussolini. Prior to that, people used to walk on foot or ride donkeys on the mountain paths.

Despite the fact that these places are declared heaven on earth (it’s even said that righteous Amalfians will return home after death), life is not that comfortable there. Of course, it probably is for Sophia Loren or Gina Lollobrigida, who own luxury villas along the coast, as we were shown, with helipads and elevators that can take them right down to the beach. For ordinary mortals, though, every simple thing turns into a difficult issue – they have to walk a hell lot of steps (and I mean that – really a lot!) every time they want to go to the beach or to work. If you ask someone where they live, they will tell you the number of the step rather than the street name! And imagine them having to do something more serious, such as painting the house! That’s what they do in this case: a van brings a couple of donkeys to the closest possible place, where the specially trained animals get loaded with buckets of paint and rush up the stairs.

We didn’t get to visit the very beautiful town of Positano, although we did fully appreciate the view over it from the observation deck: pink, white and yellow houses, literally built into the rocks. Very picturesque, but it looked even more inaccessible and impractical.

Another town where we didn’t stop either – Praiano – is less well known than Positano. It is interesting that the traditional Christmas nativity scene includes the model of the town itself. This is the ending point of the Christmas procession on December 25, carrying a miniature figuring of Christ the child. We drove past this model and had the chance to take a look.

Amalfi, despite being so celebrated, looked to us like one more replica of the previously seen towns. It is famous for the majestic Cathedral of St. Andrew, where the relics of the aforementioned saint lie. Lena was persistently urging us to see them but honestly we weren’t too enthusiastic about this idea, even though the cathedral was really very beautiful from the outside.

Speaking of holy relics: it appears that in the Middle Ages they were extremely fashionable and prestigious to have in any city, so they were then subject to barter in the best case and theft in the worst. The relics of St. Andrew appeared in Amalfi as a result of the latter actually. Sometimes they would steal not only whole relics, but also parts of them. Robbed monks were ashamed to admit being so careless, therefore, they would replace the missing parts with fake ones (surprisingly, these fake relics still went on working wonders!), and as a result, a saint could end up having three or four arms or legs.

Thus, the walking tour around Amalfi did not satisfy us, but the boat trip along its coast was very pleasant, allowing us to see all these magnificent mountains, bays, hotels and villas from the sea. We sailed in the direction of Maiori, Minori and Ravello, where our bus arrived to pick us up. By the way, on top of all the transportation troubles we had had, the bus somehow managed to hit a parked car when manoeuvring to enter yet another busy tunnel, so while we were happily enjoying our sea trip, the driver had to deal with the frustrated owner of that car.

Ravello is a small town located even higher up the cliff. We didn’t go up there, and only saw it from aside, while listening to our guide’s comments about Wagner festivals that are held there and are so popular that tickets must be booked almost a year in advance.

The town of Ravello is also a proud owner of relics – this time those of Saint Panteleimont, and every year on the day of his execution the Saint, as if to demonstrate his full consent to be in this place, arranges a miracle – liquefaction of his blood. A similar miracle, but with even more rapid boiling of the blood, is arranged by Saint Januarius, the patron of Naples. It is very important for Neapolitans, as a pattern has been traced: if the blood liquefies duly, the Vesuvius does not erupt during this year and any other ills also bypass Naples. Therefore, on this day – namely September 19 – all Neapolitans are very nervous and can’t wait for the coveted event. To guarantee it happening for sure, the oldest old ladies are sat in the first row in the cathedral (who are jokingly referred to as the “relatives of Saint Januarius” for their age), and start praying to the saint. Then, if the miracle is delayed, they switch to exhortations – gently at first, then more and more angrily until they literally end up swearing. Instead of taking offense, the Saint, either stimulated by, or scared of such attitude finally performs the long-awaited miracle!

The last town of the Amalfi coast was Vetri Sul Mare, and rounding the hill, we saw the city of Salerno in the distance and hurried back to Naples, to get to the port. On the way back, Lena told us that the Neapolitans were very superstitious , believed in destiny and tried to find signs in any event for the game of bingo . In every house there is a booklet that translates any unusual event into the language of numbers. Lena said half-jokingly, half-seriously, that upon returning home she would check that little book and find out which numbers corresponded to a traffic congestion, a corpse on the road and other events that happened to us today, and then place bets on these numbers.

Europe, Ischia, Italy

Adventures of the Azeris in Italy – Baia di Sorgeto

Posted on October 31, 2013December 16, 2013 by travellingleila

РУССКОЯЗЫЧНАЯ ВЕРСИЯ ПО ЭТОЙ ССЫЛКЕ. CLICK HERE FOR RUSSIAN VERSION.

Whoop whoop, it finally happened – the bustling Larissa’s efforts overcame the passivity of the Italian side: they managed to find the tour operator conducting tours in Russian, and its representative came to our hotel to provide all kinds of guidance to its Russian-speaking guests.

A small group of the latter gathered in the pool area, dominated (or at least, so he thought) by a man from St. Petersburg, with traces of heavy drinking on his face, not speaking any foreign language, and trying hard to show everyone how rich and cool he was: he expressed the desire to have only individual tours, was only interested in Michelin-starred restaurants and said something like “One should use a choke chain on the tour guide, to make sure they only do what you tell them to do”. His aspiration for ‘separatism’ was actually quite convenient for us, as this specimen would be extremely unpleasant to be around on any tour. His wife, by the way, looked quite simple and seemed to feel uncomfortable with her husband’s statements.

As a result of the conversation with the representative of the tour operator we got vouchers for a tour on Wednesday, and also learned about the Sorgeto bay located right here, near Sant’Angelo, and Le Fumarole beach located on a volcanic basin, heating the sand up to a hundred degrees centigrade. It sounded, though, like all you could to at Le Fumarole was baking potatoes and eggs in the sand, so we decided to abstain from a trip there and visit Sorgeto. As we were explained, the beach there pretty much consisted of natural stone beds with trickles of thermal water at 90-100 degrees Celsius flowing into them from under the ground. Combined with sea water, it results in overall temperature of around 35-40 degrees.

We took a water taxi to Sorgeto. The sailing was very pleasant, and we saw the “Elephant” rock on our way. However, Sorgeto itself, where we had been even encouraged to go at night, did not impress us that much: it was basically a jumble of huge boulders, looking scary to even step on (to us, at least), and even more so to try to lie on – it seemed absolutely impossible. Therefore, we returned to Sant’Angelo on the very next taxi.